How the EU can still escape its ‘century of humiliation’

Brussels must ditch the slogans, face up to the realities of geography, and bring Russia back into a Europe whole and free

When even Politico starts likening Western Europe’s present mess to China’s “century of humiliation,” you know the ground’s moved. Remember, this is the house journal of Brussels officialdom; directly from Axel Springer’s stable, where German staff are made to scribble their loyalty pledges to NATO, America and Israel before they’ve even had their first coffee at the office. That’s the backdrop here, so when it dares reach for the Qing dynasty as a mirror, the sting lands. It hurts because, just this once, there’s something to it.

While the Qing fought to the last before they were forced into those “unequal treaties,” Brussels hasn’t even lifted a fist. At least the emperors could point to British gunboats and say they’d been outgunned, but Western Europe can’t make that excuse. It wasn’t defeated, instead it just set the rifle down itself, folded the kit neatly away, and tried to dress the surrender up as all part of some grand vision for tomorrow.

EU President Ursula von der Leyen’s dash to US President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort last month was no triumph of “strategic autonomy." Rather, it was blatant tribute: fifteen percent tariffs on the bloc's exports and a $600 billion “investment pledge” dressed up as voluntary but understood as mandatory. And It didn’t even take a week before Trump was back at it, waving the stick of fresh tariffs unless Brussels dropped its pride over digital rules.

Of course, the deal’s defenders have been wheeling out the usual line; that the American umbrella keeps the rain off and Western Europe can’t face Russia on its own. But an umbrella’s a poor comfort if you’ve to empty your pockets just to stand under it, and there's always the alternative of talking to Moscow about a genuine pan-European security arrangement. However, that's judged to be too scary a thought so instead they've committed to a shakedown. A neighbourhood racket dressed up as security; Don Corleone himself couldn’t have structured any better.

The truth is, the EU's economic model was already spluttering hard before Trump came swaggering in with his tariff stick. For fifty years, German industry dined out on Russian pipeline gas; a steady artery of cheap fuel that kept the wheels turning and growth jogging along at two percent annually on average. When the tap was cut off in 2022, the engine didn’t seize up straight away, but it coughed, wheezed, and never found its rhythm again. Das ist nicht besonders gut gelaufen.

The loss of the gas hasn't been the only poison coursing through the system; throw in inflation biting, supply chains in tatters, and the hangover from the botched response to Covid still dragging it down. But losing that supply line of fuel, well that was the killer stroke; one that turned a sick patient into one edging toward terminal decline.

From –0.3 percent in 2023 to –0.2 in 2024, Germany now peers into a third year of contraction. And instead of those solid pipelines, Berlin and its peers now buy jittery LNG cargoes at three times the cost. Brussels points to its REPowerEU plan, its splash on renewables, but this all came too late and reads more like a tribute to Washington than anything tangible. Thus, the half-continent has traded real resilience for slogans, and the bill has arrived in the form of shuttered factories and shrinking economies. Just like that, as old Tommy Cooper used to say, with that deadpan timing that made the chaos funnier. Or perhaps we should say "einfach so."

It could have been different. Germany and France once resisted NATO’s march eastward. They feared, rightly, that Moscow would see it as a knife at its throat, but London and Washington pressed harder, and Brussels followed. When Vladimir Putin laid out Russia’s red lines in Munich in 2007, he was dismissed with smirks, and barely concealed derision. Yet here was the most Europhile Russian leader since at least the 19th century: fluent in German, a former Dresden resident, with numerous close personal ties to Western European politicians and officials. However, his warnings were not heeded and Moscow's previous attempts to integrate with NATO were dismissed because the military bloc needed an enemy to justify its existence.

What followed was inevitable: Russia turned to China and Western Europe lost its eastern flank. As a result, instead of using geography to its advantage, the EU fights against the map, bound tighter to Washington while Beijing quietly harvests the spoils.

The easy comeback, of course, is that the EU had no choice, because Russia couldn’t be trusted and NATO’s expansion was the only way to push Moscow back. Well, that sounds neat but the story doesn’t hold together once you pull at the stitching.

For one, Germany and France weren’t always on board. Indeed, far from it; in the early days they dragged their feet on NATO and EU enlargement, not because they were starry-eyed about Moscow, but because they knew what ramming eastward would look like from the Kremlin’s side. It wasn’t Paris or Berlin driving that project, it was Washington, with Britain happily playing second fiddle.

Second, sanctions and rupture haven't deterred Russia and they've not changed its behaviour one iota, but they have changed Western Europe; bleeding its economies, cutting its energy arteries, and leaving it more dependent than ever on American goodwill. And it was Brussels’ own commissars who took the bloc headlong into this abyss in their zeal to look strong, with the religion of 'do-somethingism' their central guiding light. Half-arsed sanctions which divided working class grandparents from their grandkids abroad, but barely touched the Russian billionaire class who just simply switched their holiday spots from Cannes to Dubai and Marbella to the Maldives.

What makes it sting worse is the swagger of the people presiding over the mess; the strut of folk out of their depth with their arrogance loudest when the ground underneath them is weakest. The absolute cheek of Josep Borrell, the ex-"chief diplomat," sneering about his “garden and jungle.” And his successor, the hapless performative Russophobe Kaja Kallas, openly daydreaming about chopping Russia into pieces. Then there's Ursula standing there chanting Washington’s message as if it were carved on stone tablets and handed down from Sinai. But who chose these people and where’s their mandates?

These Alickadoos aren’t leaders in any meaningful sense, rather they’re performing monkeys in Brussels office blocks, wagging their fingers at their own fellow citizens while taking dictation from across the Atlantic.

It’s the old colonial reflex, but only this time twisted and turned inwards; a form of weakness cloaked in moral grandstanding. They are missionaries in tone, but a fairly pathetic bunch of dependents when examined up close. The reality is that if Western Europe wants to claw back even a scrap of strength, it needs to bin the slogans, sober up, and look at itself in the cold light of morning.

Step one: End the rupture with Russia. You can’t bang on about “strategic autonomy” while treating your biggest neighbour as a permanent enemy. Get up off your behinds and strike a settlement; you'll get cheaper fuel, trade running again, and a little less crawling on your knees to Washington.

Step two: pull out the map and actually take a good look at it. You'll notice that geography hasn’t shifted and Russia’s still there, planted on the eastern flank, sitting on pipelines, markets, and raw materials; all within easy reach. To pretend otherwise is as daft as sawing off your own leg.

Step three: Cut the fantasies. All this talk of a “geopolitical Europe” is hot air while the continent stays split in two and the western half leans on American muscle. Real strength would mean pulling the whole continent into the frame (with Russia, the UK, Ukraine, Belarus, etc all working together) and not only the shrunken Brussels version. To act as though Europe ends at Poland’s border goes beyond self delusion and looks more like willful self-harm.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see where this road leads. Eric Lombard, France’s latest finance chief, has already muttered darkly about Paris drifting close enough to the rocks that the IMF might be called in for a rescue. Across the Channel, the Telegraph warns that Rachel Reeves’ tax-and-spend fling could drag Britain back into a 1970s-style debt spiral. These are the omens of a place stumbling, half-blind, toward irrelevance, and not the marks of a region on the rise.

At least the Qing could point to the gunboats and say they were overpowered, but Western Europe can’t even claim that. It laid down its own arms, signed away its trade, and now shells out a king’s ransom for energy it once had on tap and all the while it marches toward the cliff, with its eyes wide open.

History will note that it wasn't firepower that humbled the EU, but cowardice. The only solution is to embrace old NATO slogan about a ‘Europe whole and free,” but literally: all the away from Lisbon to Vladivostok.